We live in a democracy in the United States. Maybe. It is an absolute outrage for George W. Bush to become president if, as current trends suggest, he loses the popular vote by 250,000. The electoral college is an anachronism that we Americans have tolerated because it never got in the way.

Since 1888 it has faithfully reflected, and indeed amplified, the popular vote. But if current vote totals stand up, Mr Bush will win the presidency, even though more people voted for Al Gore.

This is not democratic.

In Britain one party will sometimes win the majority of the popular vote but fail to win a majority of the seats in parliament (the first-past-the-post system). It is even possible that the party that came in second will get to form a government. But the British have a parliamentary system in which parliament, with its single-member districts, is the sovereign authority.

The current estimate of Mr Gore's margin of 250,000 votes is hardly inconsequential. After all, John F. Kennedy's margin over Richard Nixon in 1960 was only 100,000 votes. To disregard a margin of this magnitude would be a great disservice to democracy.

There will be those who will say that the US election is held under the electoral college system and that it should be respected even if it contravenes democracy in so obvious a way.

But the constitutional system in the US does not bind electors to voting the way they are instructed.

The electoral college was set up by the constitution in an era when it was difficult to tabulate the popular vote in so large a nation within a reasonable period of time. Technically, electors to the college have discretion to vote as they wish.

Routinely during the era of the civil rights struggles, southern Democratic electors would refuse to vote for their party's candidate for president and would revolt, casting their ballots for racist third-party candidates for president such as George Wallace.

There will be huge pressure on electors to disregard their instructions and their party, and vote to make Al Gore the president if his lead in the popular vote stands. It is almost inconceivable that the United States would have a president who lost the vote of the people by any kind of a significant margin.

In 1876 and 1888 the candidates who won the popular vote (Samuel Tilden and Grover Cleveland) were denied the White House.

In those earlier, simpler times such a decision was not extraordinary. But in the modern era, when tallying the preferences of 100 million voters spread over thousands of miles presents no technical problem, there is a clear and compelling need for the will of the people to be heard and heeded.

In all likelihood, the trade unions and minority voters who constitute the core of the Gore vote will not take the theft of an election over a technicality without protests.

Nor should they. One must expect a stormy controversy if the verdicts of the electoral and popular vote continue to be at variance. Street demonstrations would be likely. The US will descend to the realm of a banana republic.

Unless the recounts spare us this fate, democracy in America is about to go on trial.

Dick Morris was chief strategist for President Clinton in his successful 1996 bid for re-election, and now heads the political website www.vote.co.uk